Was Chelsea Attack A Gay-On-Gay Crime? UPDATE: NYPD Releases Suspect Video

As I've noted in earlier posts, accounts conflict about the chair-bashing attack that took place on Tuesday at a Chelsea restaurant. According to friends of the victims, the attack was a flat-out anti-gay hate crime preceded by multiple uses of "faggot" by the assailant. But at least one witness claims that one of the victims, Jonathan Snipes, first escalated the incident by angrily confronting the assailant and may have thrown the first punch. However there may be much more to this story.

This afternoon black gay blogger Waddie G, author of The G-List, posted a claim that may reshape the entire scenario.

My friend, YouTube personality Isaam Houston, caught the latter part of the fight on camera and gave me the T because he sat next to the table of the Black men, where the fight originated upon Snipes’ confrontation. Now, what Snipes chose to leave out in his interview was that during his exchange of words with the two alleged Black aggressive homophobes is that he struck one of the Black men first which kicked off the entire brawl. How do I know this information? My friend, YouTube personality Isaam Houston, caught the latter part of the fight on camera and gave me the T because he sat next to the table of the Black men, where the fight originated upon Snipes’ confrontation.

Additionally, the word “faggot,” according to Houston, seemed to be a response to Snipes’ arrogance after knowing that he bumped the Black men’s table and knocking their drinks rather than homophobia. According to another source, who did not give me permission to identify his name – who I happened to have been cool with for years, mentioned that the chair throwing Black male seemed to check him out with frequent eye glances in a flirtatious manner. In other words, the alleged Black aggressor is possibly a same-gender-loving male, according to my source.

And guess what? One of the patrons at the restaurant called me and identified the chair thrower by name. I looked up the chair tosser’s Facebook profile, and he is allegedly gay, gay, gay and pretty popular in the ballroom scene. I am not going to snitch the guy out because I am on his side of self-defense minus the chair tossing and hate the white gay privileged narratives by gay bloggers, blogs and organizations who sensationalized this incident into more than what it was to protect the white gay hot head who wanted to demonize the Black gay men as aggressors over a physical altercation that he provoked when he could have ignored their foul language like I always do when insults are hurled my way.

Waddie G goes on to declare that all of the involved parties "were in the wrong." All of the above is hearsay for now. And even if these latest claims are proven to be completely true, criminal charges are, of course, still warranted. But maybe this wasn't an anti-gay hate crime.

UPDATE: The NYPD tonight released surveillance video of the suspect arriving at the restaurant. The clip, via DNAinfo, is only a few seconds long and pauses on the image below. A higher resolution but much smaller version of the image can be seen at the link.